Classroom Learning

1. 4 Dice: Fraction Games

“The goal of the game is to hit the target by working backwards Jeopardy style by giving the answer first. For teachers, one major benefit of using this game is that it provides immediate feedback of their students' progress via email.”

2. 5 Dice: Order of Operations

“The game encourages students to use higher order thinking to solve the ‘target’ number by working backwards given the answer but not the equation. The best feature about this simple math game is that teachers are able to receive immediate feedback of their students’ progress through email.”

3. Animation Studio

This app is for students and teachers interested in art and the benefits that can come from creating something original. Students can create short films with animation and upload to YouTube, where their work can be viewed and shared with the people they choose.

4. Bubble Math

“Allows kids to practice math facts in an engaging way. Included in the free version are the beginner, easy, and medium levels with addition, and the beginner subtraction level. I use the ‘level complete’ screen as a signal for kids working independently in centers to check in with me, as it shows the score.”

5. Collins Big Cat

“This app is excellent for emerging readers. There is an option to listen then record your voice reading the words, which is great for students practicing fluency and expression, or for teachers who want to assign this as an independent activity to check later."

7. DoInk Animation and Drawing

“The DoInk Animation and Drawing app is a creative learning app and is simple to use to do a quick doodle and yet can create sophisticated Flash-like animations and vector drawings. The app is great for students to ‘Show What They Know’ in math, science, English and storytelling.”

9. Futaba Classroom Games

“A multi-player game designed for children in K-5 classrooms to help them review a large variety of curriculum they ordinarily encounter. Up to four students can engage in friendly competition and learn using just one iPad. Each player takes a seat around a single iPad and races to match an image or word problem to a choice of four answers in front of them.”

10. Grammer Jammers

11. I Like Books

Includes 37 different books in one app. The subject matters range from colors, animals and family to outdoors, shapes and cars. These books are for children 0-6 years old, and include vivid and interactive imagery to accompany the story.

12. Kid’s Zone

“With iPhone’s touch feature, kids can draw and doodle with the maximum ease. The stencils feature teaches them about shapes and also helps kids to perfect their art. Every parent like me would always want our kids to watch kid friendly videos only. The kids’ video feature in Kid’s Zone will save parents lots of headaches to know that their kids are only watching videos that are perfect for their age.”

13. Math Series

14. Native Numbers

Inspired by research from Harvard and MIT, this app offers a complete curriculum to help early learners develop a number sense. It is designed to engage with children and minimize distractions. In addition, the app has more than 25 engaging activities to develop an understanding of core mathematics concepts.

15. Ollie’s Handwriting and Phonics

“The app helps young children improve fine motor and handwriting skills as well as introduce, reinforce, and solidify letter and sound recognition. The app has three sections: Capital Letters, Lowercase Letters and Words. Teachers can use the application to demonstrate how to form letters during handwriting lessons, or how to pronounce letter sounds during phonics lessons.”

16. Pencils, Words & Kids

“It organizes the writing process, captures the prompts I have developed in the trenches, and is a big help in working with a classroom of students whose imaginations and work each require one-on-one attention and feedback. Teachers spend a lot of time repeating themselves, and the content of the app is a great way to reinforce the messages of the lessons - slow it down.”

17. Preschool University

“People have an array of apps that work through a variety of phonics phases. Though every app doesn't have differentiation abilities, I have found ABC Spelling Magic and ABC Magic apps that meet the specific needs of my students.”

18. SHAPES+

“Kids can match colors, shapes, and numbers together. They can trace shapes on the drawing board in their choice of colors, or simply draw freely. Teachers can use SHAPES+ on an iPad with one or a group of children to reinforce color, shape, and number lessons.”

19. Socratica

20. Tell Time – Little Matchups

“For those who are struggling with identifying analog clock times. This simple interface makes it easy to quickly make sure each student is on exactly the right level of difficulty, and also allows them to work independently or in a partnership.”

21. Vimeo

“I like vimeo because I can create a ‘class’ with just my students where we share work in video format. A student could post videos of themselves giving a speech, and I can share lectures with my students. It’s private; I have the ability to comment to the entire class or to an individual student.”

22. UpToDate

“Several studies have documented the impact of UpToDate (UTD) on medical education and continual learning among trainees and clinicians. Teachers have the ability to instantly refresh their memory around a clinical topic while they are at the bedside. Trainees can have access to prepare for teaching rounds and review educational materials in the context of real patients.”

23. Word Ball

“This is a great app for those who may have a little more confidence with word building. Students get to use the letters available to create words of their choosing for points, more of which are awarded for challenging words.”

Communication Tools

1. Audioboo

Create, record, and share audio files with your friends and family. In a teaching setting, this app is perfect if you are looking to record a lesson plan idea, a brainstorming session or meeting with colleagues.

2. Blackboard Mobile Learn

Link to your Dropbox account so teachers and students can easily manage and share course documents. In addition to Dropbox integration, you can view grades, create and administer tests, send notifications and announcements, host a discussion, post and access content from class, blog, view class members and create and manage tasks.

3. Bonfyre

A private networking app that creates clubs, sports, and study groups, and improves parent-to-teacher communication. “Bonfyre provides an intimate, private level of connection between a student's daily classroom activity and their parents that cannot be achieved through other social networks or content platforms. This has opened up the lines of communication between parents and their children in beneficial ways that we could not have anticipated.”

- Raymond Gobberg, co-founder and director of communications at Bonfyre.

4. Celly

Lets anyone create a cell – groups, individuals, organizations – for group communication. Functions include exchanging messages with others, polling, alerts and reminders. Teachers can use this app for study groups, clubs, sports teams, field trips, news and reminders for their students.

5. Conduit Mobile

A product that allows for creation and development of various school-related apps. “Apps created using Conduit Mobile can include special features that are specifically useful for the education segment. A school's app can offer notifications and the latest updates on school-related and class-specific news and events. Apps can even include a bully-reporting feature that enables users to detail incidents of bullying in the classroom, schoolyard, or cyber-bullying.”

6. Color Note

A notepad with the ability to take a note, write a memo, send an email and create a shopping list or to-do list. What sets it apart? You can organize your notes by color, add a checklist, sync with your calendar, password lock, search, share and backup your files securely.

7. Engrade

Supports all-in-one communication between students, teachers and parents. With the ability to access the app anywhere, teachers can communicate attendance, grades, seating charts, messages and future assignments all from their smartphone, tablet or computer.

10. Instagram

“This app is a terrific housing place for all your pictures and gives people the ability to find your Instagram account and see your pictures if you wish. You could create a classroom profile and allow kids and parents to follow that profile of things happening during the school year.”

11. KMail

Provides a safe environment for children to send and receive emails. The app allows students to check their email via mobile tablets or smartphones when they’re on-the-go, at school or around the house. The unique part of this app is that all email is monitored by teachers through email. When a message is received, the email goes straight to the teacher for approval, if the teacher declines the message, the student never sees the email.

12. Moodle

An online education management platform. Features of the app include recording audio files (private or public), class roster for courses, messaging to class members, sync with address book, and downloadable files for offline viewing.

13. OneNote

A note-taking app for capturing all of your ideas, thoughts, and to-do’s while you’re on-the-go. Use OneNote to create a note with bullet points, pictures, text or a checkbox to-do list. Additionally, sync your notes for free with Microsoft SkyDrive online storage.

14. Pages

A word processing app for iOS devices. The app connects to all iOS devices via cloud-based storage software and syncs platforms so you can view, edit and create documents wherever you go. Also choose from 16 different templates to create a document.

15. Panopto

"Panopto's mobile application allows educators to easily record any content – from entire lectures to small class updates – from their iPhone. With just a few clicks, their recordings are immediately uploaded and stored in a secure online video library, where students can view them instantly using any device.”

16. QuickOffice

“Allows me to edit documents from my phone. I use this constantly, whether to email a copy of last night's assignment to a student while I'm on the move, or to update grade books and reading questions whenever a great idea strikes. These three apps increase my productivity and ensure that I can tie up any loose ends no matter where I am.”

18. Skype

“I love Skype to bring in guest speakers. I am not shy about asking really big companies (IBM, Zappos among so many others) to Skype with my students to share their knowledge on a particular subject matter. Say there was an expert in London. I know I’d never be able to afford to bring that person to my campus, but with Skype I can for free. It eliminates geographic boundaries as well as financial constrictions.”

19. Snapseed

“This app is awesome for manipulating and having fun with pictures you have taken or brought into your camera roll. It has many different choices to take an existing picture and make it something spectacular! These pictures could then be easily shared to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook or put it in a blog post.”

20. Wordpress

“This goes beyond teaching about blogging. WordPress can create a participative learning community. The community is made up of your class, but also others within the larger community. Conversations about course material can be shared on a larger platform and with many others. With the ability to share links, videos, and articles the information is so rich.”

Personal Organization

1. 1Password

“Keeps track of all of my passwords so that I can log into websites and programs quickly. With so many accounts between my work and personal life, 1Password makes it easy to generate and store highly secure passwords so that my personal and student information stays private.”

2. Any.DO

A to-do list app that helps you to remember things that need to get done. Whether the task needs to be done today, tomorrow, this week or later, you have the option to set the time limit and due date. Bonus: personalize the task with an alarm, a phone number (which actually calls the person listed) or place in a folder.

3. Air Sharing

Works with several different file formats including iWork, Microsoft Office, PDF, RTF, movies, audio, images and more, and stores this information through an external hard drive or cloud storage. View your documents on-the-go or print documents wirelessly. This app is a huge time saver for those who are constantly on the go.

4. Dragon Dictation

Use your voice to create email messages or send text messages. You can also dictate your updates for social networks or send reminders to yourself. The app will also, over time, adapt to the distinct sound of your voice.

5. Dropbox

“Provides cloud storage for all of my files, and I can access them from my work computer, personal computer, iPad or iPhone. I store both personal and work files on Dropbox, and they automatically sync in the cloud, so no matter which device I am using I can open my most recent versions.”

6. Evernote

Allows you to track notes from brainstorming or idea sessions with colleagues. You can also record voice memos, write to-do lists and notes. If you don’t remember your phone, no problem, Evernote is also accessible from your computer!

9. iGrader – Pocket Grade Calculator

Get rid of your old grade and download the fastest and easiest way to track grades! By selecting the number of questions from a test, this app will automatically update any mistakes or incorrect answers, as well as provide a full list of possible grades.

10. Instapaper

Download articles or look for your favorite web pages without an Internet connection. You can also adjust fonts and text sizes and find words with the built-in English dictionary. Additionally, sync with other devices and download up to 500 articles at a time!

11. iTeacherBook

External links provided on Rasmussen.edu are for reference only. Rasmussen College does not guarantee, approve, control, or specifically endorse the information or products available on websites linked to, and is not endorsed by website owners, authors and/or organizations referenced.

Kendall is an Online Community Specialist at Collegis Education who oversees online communities on behalf of Rasmussen College. She has a passion for social media and enjoys motivating and encouraging former, current and future learners.

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